


Oncoming Storm

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [55]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23785642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: Rex is a planner, is almost religiously methodical.  There was no chance that Torrent's staffing was a coincidence.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex/CC-1138 | Bacara
Series: Soft Wars [55]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 56
Kudos: 558





	Oncoming Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Yes title is a Dr Who reference. Mando'a and other references at the end.
> 
> Oya Torrent!

“Developing the GAR’s entire counter-offense portfolio on your first day in command tat’ka1?” Bacara asks. He shoulders in to the ten-seat briefing room Rex commandeered immediately after his own promotion, a tray in each hand.

They’d had refreshments at Rex’s promotion, little unfilling, salty things in six different permutations. They hadn’t been there for Rex, not really. More for whatever pair of Senators it had been that had attended to Shake His Hand and Commend His Valor. One of them had pinned his Captain insignia to his grays. He’s already forgotten both of them.

He’s hungry.

“I think I’ll leave the strategic planning to you CC’s. You _do_ still need something to do around here.”

Bacara snorts. Rex steps up to rescue his draft squad specialty outlines before Bacara can elbow the stack out of the way, or worse, drop food on top of them. Rex has gotten approximately nowhere on those yet, but it’s the principle.

Bacara waits out his shuffling and drops the trays into the cleared space. This might be the second round of food this shiny, chrome and duracrete briefing room has seen in its existence. Rex thinks he might have put the first ever fingerprint smudge on the table.

“What’s all this then?”

“The most aggravating puzzle in the galaxy,” Rex mutters. He trades the holopad he’s taking notes on for Bacara’s second tray. Recognizably meat, individually defined grains of some starch, vegetables that aren’t a paste. A flimsifoil-wrap thing to keep the heat in while the insta-bread rehydrates. A small, disposable plast cup of something pudding-y and sweet. There’s a real difference between how they feed command and troops, isn’t there?

_That_ will be the first thing to go, Rex decides. His first rule of command, second on the list of procedures right after the one specifying that the command staff mark is a solid blue line outlining the visor2. As soon as he gets his note-pad back he’ll write it down.

He’d crammed the straight-backed, barely-padded rolling chairs up against the wall on one short side of the rectangular table. Space is a premium and sitting for any period of time in those things is cruel, even when he’s wearing his grays. He doubts whoever sourced them gave any thought to whether or not they’d accommodate a trooper in shell.

Rex grabs one and uses it to store the displaced stack of flimsi. He eats standing.

The insta-bread comes out of the foil softer than Rex has ever had. He never even knew he liked bread.

Bacara tosses the holopad back. “They’re letting you pick your staffing? How does a Captain rate that?”

“A Captain doesn’t usually. But this is apparently a special case. I asked for a list and no one thought to say no. And now I can pick, just within some restrictions.” Rex flips through the documents to the recruiting master list a harried Specialist had thrown him to get him to go away. He underhand throws it back. It’s only a moment and a page of scrolling before Bacara sees the catch.

“ _Rejects_ ,” he sneers, viciously offended on Rex’s behalf.

Rex had thought that too, three hours ago. “Survivors,” he corrects. “To a man, all they’ve done is not die when they were expected to. But no one’s willing to risk their unit cohesion.”

It only mollifies Bacara somewhat.

Companies recruit entire squads, men already trained to work with each other. The longer this war goes on, Rex thinks, the less picky they’ll probably be about that. But as it stands, the general consensus is it’s too much work to spend the training time getting a group of singles operating efficiently inside a new unit.

And those men end up here, being evaluated in absentia by a CT who’s been Captain for three hours.

All three positions on Rex’s command staff are still technically unfilled, though he has a potential candidate for one. It’s a little bit of an insane choice. He’d like to fill the other two slots traditionally, before making the final call for the third.

Bacara flips through his notes, pausing every now and then to read something in detail. Rex lays into dinner. It turns out he also likes pudding.

“They’re calling you Torrent?”

“They’re not bothering to call us anything at all,” Rex says. “They left it blank, and nothing in the system stopped me from filling it in.” Same with the Company color, the command staff mark, the expected training, the unit specialty.

It’s very obvious no one expects this Company to survive very long. Rex figured that out before his promotion award was even over. No doubt the intent is, from the day they ship out they'll be thrown at the very worst threats. Again and again and again for however many times it takes for them to stop making it back.

“Rex,” Bacara says, low and insistent. He sees it too.

“No.”

“ _Rex_.” Bacara rounds the table quick as an avalanche and clamps down on Rex’s arm like a vice. His words are fast, the accent he tries to hide sharpening the edges of his consonants. “I can take you right now as a squad lead. Less than a year, you can be SiC of any Marine Company of your choice.”

He’s afraid. It startles Rex a little. He didn’t really think about whether he would be. Rex had already decided not to tell any of the Shebse, he’d forgotten there was someone else who’d care.

“Bacara-”

“You _know_ this is a set-up. They’re trying to kill you.”

“You’re imagining malicious intent,” Rex says, and it’s not comforting. It really isn’t meant to be. “No one has it out for me. This is just. Dispassionate.”

No one cares. Rex would almost have preferred it be malicious intent. He might have been able to report sabotage, if that had been the case.

“Dead is dead,” Bacara snaps. “And there’s no honor in dying for nothing.”

“Then _I’ll make it count_.”

They’re the same height, but Bacara has always had a habit of using his greater bulk to seem like he was towering. It always, somehow, made Rex feel inexplicably safe. Hands wrap around each of his elbows, tug him into a closeness Bacara rarely indulges in and even more rarely initiates.

“What more do you have to prove?” he asks. From anyone else it would be a plea. From Bacara?

Bacara knew him as a fighter first, and has always, always respected him as such. Bacara wants to know his reasoning, but he won’t ever ask Rex to justify his decisions to him.

“I don’t know,” Rex admits. “But whatever it is, I need to prove it to myself.”

The Marine Commander breathes out his displeasure, but leaves it blessedly unspoken. Rex watches as he bites back arguments, swallows a protest. The Marine Commander is never challenged out in the field. He’s never once brought that to bear on Rex.

“What do you need?” he offers instead. Rex smiles through the rush of fondness for this man. He thinks Rex is making a mistake. He’ll help anyway.

Rex pushes forehead against forehead in Keldabe3 for just a second. That’s for himself. He smoothly shifts the angle, brushes lip against lip as Bacara prefers.

“Help me staff command,” he says. Once he has that, the other slots will fall into place. Bacara nods.

Their food is cold, but the bread is still delicious. Rex updates his first mandate: everyone in the Company eats the same food, but all insta-bread needs to come with the little flimsyfoil thing.

“I’m staffing for specializations,” he says, and retrieves his stack of options, “not general command experience. I want them to know their jobs first, before I care about how well they bark orders.” Bacara nods, takes half the stack.

“Give me your options for medical,” he says and returns the list of weapons specialists. “There’s one cross-trained longgunner the 21st ran with in the last campaign. I was considering him for Marines; you’ll want him at your back.”

Rex swaps stacks, silently grateful. Bacara is supportive, but even he might not be be able to hold in his opinion if he saw the trooper Rex is considering for the heavy gunner command spot.

The kid’s got the moxie. Rex can fix the experience.

Two down then. Now they just need to find a scout, and Torrent will be ready to Hunt.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. (Journeyman Protector Dialect) Little Brother. Back  
> 2\. [This reference here](https://raemanzu.tumblr.com/post/123039695539/hmm-yes-this-powerpoint-is-coming-along-nicely) is the reason I made the command squad who they were, united via the blue ring around the visor. TMYK. Back  
> 3\. Short for Keldabe kiss. Mandalorian practice of pressing foreheads together to express affection. Back  
> 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Storm Forming, A Coda to Oncoming Storm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23793118) by [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506)




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